There had been a sense that Hillary Clinton's campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination had been drifting. A weariness with a candidate who was not trusted and who epitomised insider Washington, a perception that her campaign embodied a notion of entitlement and was no more than a coronation, and the emergence of socialist Bernie Sanders as a surprise, credible Trump-like opponent with grass roots appeal, all had combined to inject doubt.
But in Las Vegas in the first Democratic TV presidential debate on Tuesday night, the campaign came alive and a dominant and feisty Clinton came back fighting, aggressively questioning Sanders’s form on issues like gun control or mocking his support for the Danish health care system.
Centre stage, Clinton displayed a confidence, experience and authority that eclipsed the more tentative Sanders and the three also-rans, former governors Martin O'Malley and Lincoln Chafee of Maryland and of Rhode Island respectively, and former senator from Virginia Jim Webb. Her subliminal message to Vice-President Joe Biden, still considering a run, was that here was a candidate who would not be easily pushed aside. Has he really got the appetite for this battle?
Sanders, who represents a hunting state, was most easily wrong-footed on gun control as Clinton turned both barrels on his ambivalent voting record and on the formidable National Rifle Association. "I think that we have to look at the fact that we lose 90 people a day from gun violence," she said. "This has gone on too long, and it's time the entire country stood up against the NRA." It is an issue that resonates particularly well with black and hispanic communities.
It was not by any means a knock-out blow and she lags behind Sanders in polls for the New Hampshire primary. But although not expected to beat her, he has already succeeded in pulling the party’s debate significantly to the left, his rousing riposte to her that “Congress does not regulate Wall Street, Wall Street regulates Congress”, winning one of the biggest rounds of applause of the night from the partisan audience.